


an Anders alphabet

by accidental



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: AU, Angst, Fluff, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Smut, bereavement, rape/non con references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:57:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 15,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accidental/pseuds/accidental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short pieces for the alphabet based character exploration thing that's going around.<br/>Most will be about DA2 Anders, but some will feature Andy from my modern AU series. I will specify which ones are Anders and which are Andy at the top of the chapter, and I'll update tags, characters, warnings etc as i go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. After the Chantry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

At first, he felt almost calm.

Maybe it was just shock, but none of it seemed real - even the relief when he realised he wasn‘t going to die had been muted and dreamlike, almost as if it was happening to someone else.  
Later though, as they run through the bloody, burning streets he stumbles, starts to shake.  
There are corpses everywhere, both human and… not human.  
He finds himself staring down at the foul, slimy remains of an arcane horror, unable to look away.

“I never thought it would be this bad…” he says.

“I suppose you thought it would be all rainbows and pixie dust?" Hawke snarls at him, almost spits. 

“No, but… the mages…”

“They’re desperate, Anders. They’re fighting for their lives.”

He glares at the blond mage as if he‘s trying hard not to hit him.

“This is what you wanted,” he says harshly.

Anders doesn’t know if it is. He can remember wanting it, but the certainty that had driven him is gone, replaced by a dull confusion.  
He can‘t feel the part of himself that he thought of as Justice.  
He feels amputated, abandoned, utterly lost.

It’s like waking from a nightmare, only to find the reality is worse. 

*****

On the third night, they take shelter in a ruined building. Bitter rain slants down through the holes in the roof. Unwilling to risk a fire, they shiver miserably beneath stolen blankets.

Despite his declaration that he’d rather be on the run with Anders than safe anywhere else, Hawke finds it hard to look the other man in the eyes. He’s barely spoken to him since they left Kirkwall, and eventually, Anders can’t stand the silence for another second.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” he mutters. “I’ll understand. I don’t want you to stay if you can’t forgive me.”

Hawke doesn’t answer. 

“I don’t know if I can forgive myself…” Anders says.

He’s not sure he deserves comfort, but he desperately needs something, some small shred of hope to cling to.

Hawke says nothing, just stares bleakly at him out of the deepening shadows, his eyes indecipherable.

 

When Hawke falls asleep, Anders moves closer to him, drawn by the warmth and the need for comfort.  
He lays there, listening to him breathe, feeling the distance between them as an icy, desolate wasteland that goes on for miles.

 

Hawke dreams of a fire that pierces the sky. He looks up and there’s blood in his eyes.  
They’re all watching him, waiting. He understands what's expected of him, but he can’t bring himself to do it.  
He doesn’t know what to think, what to feel. He only knows he’d rather die than do anything to harm the man he loves.  
The knife drops from his numb fingers.  
“Come with me” he says. “Help me defend the mages.”

The look on Anders face makes the breath catch in his throat, and the sound it makes wakes him.

“Lucas…”

Anders reaches out tentatively. He places the flat of his hand against Hawke’s back, flinches as he feels the other man tense beneath his touch.

“ Don’t...” Hawke pleads.

“I almost wish you’d killed me.”

“Don’t say that, Anders, please...”

Hawke’s voice is hoarse. He rolls onto his back and his eyes are wide, the shimmer of unshed tears visible in the moonlight. 

“What are we going to do?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.”

Somehow, their hands find each other across the distance, fingers meeting, hesitant at first, then gripping tightly.

It's not just a touch, it's more than that. It's a small shred of hope.

It's something to cling, to as they lay among the ruins.


	2. Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

Anders isn’t sure how often they bring him food and water. At first he thinks it’s once a day, but there’s no real way to tell, and after a while the whole concept of time seems meaningless anyway. There’s just so much of it. It presses in on him, weighs him down, like the darkness, and the silence, and the ancient stone above.  
  
The darkness is bad.  
  
It’s the kind of darkness that clings and wraps itself around you, chokes the air from your lungs. Shapes form themselves out of it's depths, and things move unseen at it‘s edges.  
  
Sometimes he presses the heel of his hand against his face, watches the patterns of light and colour that burst like fireworks behind his eyes.  
  
The darkness is bad, but Anders thinks the silence is probably even worse.  
  
The sound of his own breath, ragged and uneven, fills the tiny cell until it feels like the darkness, the walls, the stone are all living, breathing things, closing in on him, crushing the air from his lungs and leaving him gasping.  
  
Sometimes, he dreams that he is buried alive, and he wakes up screaming.  
  
 “Please, let me out, I won’t do it again, I’ll be good, I promise…”  
  
The despair in his own voice terrifies him, and he presses a shaking hand against his lips, holding it in.  
  
  
*****  
  
When they let him out, his legs are weak. They tremble beneath him as he walks, and he has to hold onto the Templars for support, hating himself for the pitiful way he clings to the cold metal of their gauntlets.  
Everything’s too big, too bright. The walls seem to tilt away into the distance. The light makes his eyes water.  
Enchanter Wynne is waiting for him in the infirmary. She gestures to the Templars to wait on the other side of the door, and they do it without argument.  
 Everyone respects Wynne, everyone likes her.  
Anders tries his best to despise her, the way he tries to despise anyone in authority, or anyone he sees as having given in. But she’s always been kind to him, and genuine kindness isn't easy to come by, in the circle.  
  
He’s glad it’s her, and not some of the others.  
  
The Enchanter smiles at him. It’s a gentle smile, but there’s something wrong with it, a sadness around the edges. Anders can’t help wondering what she sees when she looks at him.  
  
“Anders…“  
  
He looks up at her through his tangled hair, eyes too big for his face.  
  
“ I’m going to examine you, make sure you‘re alright.” she says. “I won’t do anything without asking first, but it means I’ll have to touch you. Is that all right?”  
  
He nods and looks away again, examines his hands. They look alien and unfamiliar - pale, spidery things that don’t belong to him. The nails are ragged and filthy.  
  
 The Enchanter lays a gentle hand on his head, and something warm and green washes over him. He feels it in his bones and at the roots of his hair, and he closes his eyes and leans into it. It’s touch brings tears to his eyes.  
  
“It’s all right, the strength will come back to your muscles once you start using them again,” Wynne reassures him. “Did they… do anything to you? Did they hurt you?”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“Can you talk?” The healers voice is full of concern. She’s never seen Anders so quiet, and she’s frightened for him.  
  
Anders doesn’t know. He’s afraid to try. His face feels stiff and unused, his jaw tight. His lips feel stitched shut. What if he can’t? What if his voice comes out wrong, changed, and he doesn’t sound like himself?  
  
What if he still sounds as scared as he feels?  
  
Wynne touches his shoulder reassuringly.  
“I’ll get someone to bring you some hot water and clean clothes, and you can stay here for tonight.  Is there anything else you need?”  
  
“Karl…” he whispers. His voice comes out choked and hoarse, and he doesn’t like the way it feels.  
  
“Karl?” Wynne looks confused. “Do you mean Enchanter Thekla?”  
  
“Yes, please...”  
  
He doesn’t look her in the eyes.  
  
“I don’t know. It’s not really appropriate.” Wynne glances up at the door, and then back to the young man, who is picking at the hem of his robe nervously. There’s something brittle about him, something that might so easily fracture and fall apart.  
  
“All right” she says.” You can see him, just for a few minutes.”  
  
  
*****  
  
  
The first thing Karl thinks, when he sees him, is that they’ve broken him.  
  
Anders sits perched on the edge of the bed, hugging his knees, his lanky body hunched in on itself, all angles and sharp edges.  
  
His eyes look haunted.  
  
The first thing he feels, even before the sheer relief at seeing his friend again, is hate. He hates them for what they’ve done to him. For a second, he almost hates Anders too, for being so stubborn and pigheaded, for giving them a reason to do this to him. He pushes the feelings away, refuses to let himself feel them, the way he’s taught himself not to feel so many things.    
  
He says “I take back everything I ever said about you not being able to grow a proper beard.”  
  
 Anders reaches for him.  
  
“It’s still not as good as mine though…”  
  
“How long was I in there?” Anders voice is shaky and uneven.  
  
“It was almost a year. I’m so sorry darling…”  
  
A shiver runs through the mage's body, and then he’s clinging to the older man, his hands like claws, fingers twisting and tearing at the fabric of Karl’s robes.  
  
“It’s all right, it’s over…”  
  
Anders chest heaves. He doubles over. The darkness rushes at him, fills him, and he’s drowning in it.  
  
“I can’t… I can‘t…” he gasps.  
  
“It’s ok, sweetheart - you’re ok. Just breathe…”  
  
“I can’t!” Anders howls and clutches at him.  
  
“Yes, you can - deep, slow breaths, that’s it…”  
  
Slowly, gradually, his fingers uncurl and relax their grip, though he doesn’t let go completely.  
The two of them lay back on the bed, Anders head nestled into the crook of the Enchanter’s shoulder, and after a while, Karl feels a series of little shudders against his chest. It takes him a minute to realise Anders is laughing.  
  
“Look at us,” he snorts through his blocked nose, “ in bed together, right under the Templar's noses. Pity I’m in no state to take advantage of the situation.”  
  
“You’re lovely.”  
  
 “I know, but I’m not sure this is really what you had in mind when you said you liked me being dirty…”  
  
Karl chuckles. “I missed you,” he says.  
  
He’s aware that those three words aren’t anywhere near enough to express all the things he wants Anders to know - how worried he’s been, and how frightened, and how much it hurt not to be able to see him or speak to him or touch him. But it wouldn’t be fair to say any of that out loud. It would be dangerous in ways he can‘t even put into words, for both of them.  
  
They’re not the three words he wants to say, but they’ll have to do.  
  
He holds Anders fiercely and protectively, cradles his head against his chest, stroking the matted blond hair with unsteady fingers.  
  
“Don’t ever let them do that to you again.”  
  
 Anders smiles. Karl can’t see the smile, but he feels it, somehow. He can hear it in his voice.  
  
“They‘ll have to catch me first,” he says.


	3. Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's about Andy from my AU series, Only When You Fall - i hope that's not cheating!

After Karl dies, Andy starts going out a lot.

He hates his flat. It’s too small, too full of stuff he doesn‘t need. It’s suffocating. So he goes out and he drinks, and sometimes, when he’s drunk enough, he dances. And there’s always someone, some guy with sweaty hands and beer breath, someone who’ll push him roughly up against the wall, make the breath catch in his throat.

Someone who’ll want him.

This one seems... ok. At least, he’s not ugly, which is always a plus. And he has that dumb, predatory, look in his eyes. Shark eyes. Andy likes that.

If there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s men who are sensitive in bed. He doesn’t want to talk, or cuddle, or to have a fucking massage. He doesn’t want someone to ask him if it feels good. 

He doesn’t care if it feels good.

He just wants to not think, to not feel. To lose himself for a little while.

He wants bruises, and the next best thing to oblivion.

The shark guy grasps his wrist, presses the palm of Andy’s hand against the hard bulge in the front of his jeans. Andy feels slightly dizzy. He strokes his thumb up over the outline of the stranger’s cock.

“I want to take you home and fuck your brains out,” the man says, and the words, the heat of them against his skin and the little thrill of not-quite-wanting, not-quite-fear they send through him, makes Andy laugh out loud.

 

*****

“Does it make you feel better?” Varic asks.

Andy stares down into the cup of tea going cold on the coffee table in front of him. He wants to drink it, but he doesn’t dare pick it up, because he doesn’t want Varic to see the way his hands are shaking.

“For a little while,” he says. “It makes everything... stop.”

“And what about afterwards?”

“Afterwards I hate myself even more.” 

The therapist sits back in his chair. He’s doing that thing with his hands, that posey little thing he does, where he steeples his fingers together like he’s praying.

“Why do you think you feel the need to keep punishing yourself?” he asks, and Andy just shrugs.

There’s a picture on the wall of Varic’s office that he really likes.  
It’s a photograph of a forest. The trees are pale and slender, silvery, like ghost trees. Bright bands of sunlight slant between them.  
Andy spends a lot of time looking at the picture. Sometimes he thinks he’d like to be somewhere like that, somewhere cold and clear and bathed in pure light.

Varic leans forwards. He says, “If Karl was here now, what would you say to him?” and Andy is caught off guard by the question. He answers without thinking.

“Come back, you bastard,” he says. “Please come back, I need you…”

The pain rises up into his throat like vomit. He tries to swallow it back down.

“And what do you think he would say to you?” Varic’s voice is soft.

 _Oh god, that’s an easy one,_ Andy thinks. _It would break his fucking heart, seeing me like this after everything he did for me..._

He’d always wanted Karl to be proud of him.

“I don’t think I want to do this any more.” he says.

 

*****

After that, he stops going out.

He throws himself into his work, taking on all the shifts he can get, coming home night after night too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep in front of the TV with Pounce curled up on his chest. 

He likes being busy, likes the feeling of being needed, of helping people. Taking their pain away.  
His sleep cycle is completely fucked though. Double shifts, nights, endless cups of sugary black coffee to keep him going, and then sleeping pills when he gets home and the neighbours are having one of their bloody all night drum and bass parties. 

Most of the time, he doesn’t have the energy to think about how lonely he is, and when he does he tells himself it’s ok, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to get close to anyone anyway. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be brave enough to risk that sort of pain again.

One morning when he gets home, there‘s a parcel leaning against the front door. A flat rectangle of brown paper and bubblewrap, smothered in yards of tape.  
There’s a note attached to it, in Varic’s almost illegible scrawl.

 _Was going to throw this out, but remembered you liked it,_ it says.

Then, at the bottom of the page:

_The light is always there - sometimes you just can’t see it through the trees._

*****

“Where do you want this one?”

Gareth holds up the picture so that Andy, sprawled flat on top of the bed, can see what he‘s talking about. 

“It doesn’t really go with the décor in here,” he says.

“Let’s face it, none of my stuff goes with your décor...” Andy laughs. “But that one has to be where I can see it. It’s got sentimental value,” he insists.

Hawke props the photo up in the centre of the mantelpiece. Although he grumbles about it, he secretly likes the idea of Andy’s cheap, mismatched belongings cluttering up his careful interior design.  
He likes Andy cluttering up his life, complicating it and making it unbelievably wonderful at the same time.  
Sometimes he still wants to pinch himself, to make sure it’s real. 

He stretches himself out on the bed beside his lover, and leans in to kiss him, and the breath catches in Andy’s throat as their lips touch.

“I’m glad you said yes,” Gareth says.

“I am too,“ Andy reaches out and cups the back of Gareth’s neck, his fingers threading through the short dark hair. He moves against him until their bodies are pressed tightly together, and somehow it still doesn’t feel close enough.

Bright bands of sun slant in through the blinds, bathing them in pure light.


	4. Dance with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU Andy again. This is a version of part of something i'm writing at the moment - again, i hope that's not cheating!

“I’m not sure this is my sort of thing…”  
Gareth glances round at the crowded interior of The Gallows. The place is packed, the dancefloor heaving with bodies picked out in jerky flashes by the strobe lighting, like bad stop frame animation.

Even though he’s a couple of years younger than Andy, Hawke is very definitely a grown up. Andy knows he secretly prefers tasteful wine bars, or even old man pubs with Real Ale. The noise and the sweat of a gay club isn’t really his style.

“I’m sure Merrill won’t mind if we don’t stay much longer. She probably won‘t even notice.” He tilts his bottle to his lips, downing the contents in a couple of swallows. “Come on, let’s get one more beer, and then we’ll go somewhere else.”

They’re heading towards the bar when Merrill‘s voice comes over the sound system. 

“This next one’s for my dear friend Gareth, and his lovely boyfriend Andrew! “ she announces gleefully.

A few people cheer. Someone wolf whistles. 

“You can’t argue with destiny, boys,” she adds, over the first few beats of the song.

“I’ll bloody kill her…“ Gareth looks embarrassed. His cheeks are flushed pink. 

Andy likes the way Hawke blushes so easily. He thinks it’s sort of cute.  
He laughs and takes his lover’s hands in his.

“Dance with me, “ he says.

“I don’t… “ Gareth looks awkward. “Andy, seriously - I dance like someone’s dad.”

"We'll see about that!"

He places his arms around the other man’s neck, and pulls him close.

Gareth brings up his hands to rest lightly on Andy’s hips, feeling the slight sway of them beneath his palms.

They fit together perfectly.

“It’s easy, see. You just sort of… move,” he says.

And then they’re swaying together, slowly, and it really doesn’t go with the music at all, but it doesn‘t matter.

Andy doesn’t let on, but he’s never done this before, never danced with someone like this, the way people dance at weddings.

It’s nice.

He closes his eyes, and everything else fades into the background. It doesn’t matter that they’re surrounded by hundreds of people - there’s only the music, and the feathery touch of Gareth’s breath against his skin, the heat of his body. 

He feels drugged by it, almost dizzy, like he‘s floating. 

_I wish we could stay like this forever,_ he thinks.

He feels the soft touch of a hand against his cheek, opens his eyes to see his lover looking into them.

Just before their lips touch there’s an endless moment where they seem to hang, suspended, breathing each other‘s breath, making it last, that moment of not quite kissing, of wanting and waiting. 

When it comes, the kiss is tender at first, deep and unhurried, sensual rather than sexual. It changes gradually, becomes more urgent, and then it’s all heat and hunger, open mouths and nipping teeth and a burning, aching need to get closer, to feel skin against skin.

Gareth’s hands are cupping Andy’s arse, thumbs stroking in maddening little circles. The teasing, delicious, friction against his cock as they move against each other is almost unbearable.  
He angles his hips slightly, pressing himself against the other man’s body, and feels rather than hears Hawke’s response - a low vibration in his throat, a huff of warm breath against Andy’s parted lips.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Gareth says, almost shouting in an attempt to make himself heard over the music.

“Um… not sure I can actually make it that far, “ Andy moans.  
He's not even sure he can walk. His legs feel weak and boneless, his nerves raw with need at the thought of Gareth, naked beneath him, in that ridiculous honeymoon bed.


	5. The earring, and what it reminds him of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

“I didn’t know you used to wear an earring, “ Hawke says.

He’s never noticed it before, the tiny indentation in Anders left earlobe, where the skin has almost closed up over the piercing. He obviously hasn’t been paying enough attention to the man's ears.

“I had to sell it, to pay for passage to Kirkwall. It ‘s a pity really - I was quite fond of it.”

Anders stretches himself out beneath Hawke’s hands, the skin sliding up across his ribs like silk.

“I can picture you with an earring,” Hawke tells him. “I bet it suited you.”

He closes his teeth over the lobe of Anders ear, tugs at it gently, and then not so gently, and Anders swears, and gasps, and clings to him, and it’s a while before either of them speak coherently again.

*****

The next day, Hawke comes back from the market with a tiny plain gold ring, wrapped in coloured paper like a feastday gift.

Usually, the healer complains if Hawke tries to give him anything that’s not immediately practical, but this time the pleasure on his face is genuine. “I love it, Lucas,” he says. “ It’s perfect.”

The earring goes in much more easily than he expects it to. He manages to get it through the tiny hole without even looking. There’s a pinch, and a slight burn, but that’s all.  
He holds his hair out of the way, so that his lover can see it.

“You look very handsome,” Hawke tells him.” Dashing - I think that’s the word.”

“Do I?” Anders smiles.  
He can’t resist going over to look at himself in the mirror.

Someone else stares back at him. A stranger with scruffy clothes and sad, serious eyes.

He doesn’t recognise himself. 

The unkempt hair, the dark stubble on his cheeks, the tired lines around his eyes - none of it fits the image he has of himself, in his head. 

In his head he’s still the same man he was when he met Justice.

 _When did I get so shabby and thin and... worn out?_ he wonders.

Somehow he’d never expected to end up like this - spending his days in a sewer full of sick people, undernourished and exhausted and wearing boots held together by bandages. The glint of gold through his hair seems out of place, and slightly absurd. It’s unsettling.  
It reminds him of who he used to be, and the simple pleasure he took in silks and shiny things, and the hopes he had, back when he still had hopes, and not just plots and principles and objectives. 

Back when he still had a future.

 _How much of this is really me?_ he wonders.

_How much of me is left?_

He watches as Hawke comes up behind the sad, shabby man in the mirror and lifts the hair away from his neck, presses warm lips against his skin.

“You look lovely,” he says, softly.

Anders feels a pressure building in his throat, and does his best to swallow it back down.  
He fingers the ring in his ear.  
“It’s probably a bit ostentatious for Darktown,” he says.” Do you mind if I keep it for special occasions?”

“I don’t mind what you do, as long as promise to wear it for me, sometimes.”  
Hawke wraps his arms around his lover’s chest, rests his head on his shoulder, hair the colour of autumn chestnuts against the ragged feathers.

Anders watches them in the mirror. 

He watches the way Hawke’s eyes light up when he looks at him, like there’s still something left, something beautiful and worth having.


	6. For freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

Anders is sprawled over the bench with his head in Karl’s lap, trying to read.  
They’ve managed to find a patch of light to sit in, and splashes of ruby and sapphire from the stained glass window far above them spill down across the flagstones, bathing them in an illusory warmth.

Anders finds it difficult to read, these days. He finds it almost impossible to concentrate on anything, and Karl isn’t helping, fiddling with his hair like that. And now he’s got the thought of sunlight in his head - real sunlight, the sort that you can feel right through to your bones, not this pale imitation, this make believe sun, shining down on a lets pretend life. 

“Maybe I’ll go to Sunny Antiva,” he says.  
He always says Antiva like that, the same way he always sees it in his head, preceded by the word sunny with a capital S. 

Karl responds with a little sound that could mean anything.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, you’re not planning on doing something stupid, are you?”

“ I don’t really plan things,” Anders admits. “Though if I did, it probably would be something stupid.”

Karl sighs. Anders scares him a bit, since they let him out of solitary. He’s more unpredictable, his emotions closer to the surface, his moods liable to change from one extreme to another, from a sort of barely suppressed hysteria, to black despair and back again, in the space of a few minutes.

Karl feels fiercely protective towards the younger mage. Anders is already so scarred, both inside and out, and he just wants to look after him, keep him safe.

Sometimes, recently, he’s come dangerously close to telling him how he feels.

Now, winding a strand of reddish gold around his fingers, he says ”I don’t want them to hurt you again.”

Anders snorts. “I’m not too keen on the idea, either.”

“But that won’t stop you, will it?”

Karl knows he should probably shut up now. He should bite his tongue, think about something different. _Look at the way the light from the window reflects on his face and makes his eyes shimmer like gold. I should tell him that,_ he thinks. _It’s the sort of thing he always likes to hear._  
But instead, he hears himself asking “Exactly how far are you willing to go, Anders? I mean, what are you willing to risk, for freedom? Because one of these days they’ll get fed up with chasing after you and dragging you back, and you’ll end up with a Templar sword between your ribs. And it’s not worth it, it’s not even a real thing - it’s just a word! How many people do you think are really free? Even out there, people can’t just go round doing whatever they want - everyone has constraints and limitations. Freedom is basically an abstract concept. “

Karl pauses, running out of steam.  
He ’s not even sure if he agrees with most of what he‘s just said - he just knows he wants Anders to be safe, and sane, and not dead. 

“What are you prepared to sacrifice, for an idea?” he asks him.

“I don’t know,” Anders says, confused. “It’s not like that.”

He’s never tried to put it into words, but Anders knows his friend has got it wrong. Freedom isn’t just a word - it’s more like an instinct, a compulsion, a fierce hunger that consumes him until sometimes he can think of nothing else.

He blinks back a tear.

“I thought you understood,” he says, and Karl feels suddenly guilty.

“I do,” he reassures him. He leans forward to plant a kiss on the younger man’s forehead. “I just…... I get scared for you sometimes.” 

“I do too, “ Anders says.

*****

Years later, he remembers the conversation.

He’s sitting in the Hanged Man with the others, watching as they tell the same old stories, and laugh at the old same jokes, and enact all the comforting little rituals of friendship - the things that hold them together.

Anders feels like he's watching them from the outside, across an immeasurable distance.

“You’re quiet tonight, Blondie,” Varric observes. “You ok there?”

“Yes, I‘m... I'm fine. Thank you.” Anders smiles, and wonders if it looks as fake as it feels. He wants to smile properly, he really does. He wants them all to know how much they mean to him, and sometimes, lately, he’s come dangerously close to telling them.

“I like your new coat,” Merrill tells him. “You’re like a lovely, shiny crow!”

“He’s a handsome devil, isn’t he?”

Hawke reaches out to ruffle the soft black feathers. His expression is full of love and tenderness, and Anders is suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea.

 _I can’t do this,_ he thinks, but then something shifts and stirs within him, and he loses his grip on the thought, feels it slip through his grasp.

Everything is in place, there’s no going back now.

Merrill leans her head against Varric’s shoulder, and Fenris reaches for the playing cards. Hawke gets up to go to the bar for another bottle of whiskey. Anders watches them from a distance, and remembers Karl‘s question.

_What are you prepared to sacrifice, for an idea?_

He knows now.  
Innocent lives. The safety of the people he cares about. His love. His life.  
He's ready to sacrifice it all.


	7. Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

“Anders!”

Anders whirls around, just in time to see Hawke jump backwards as the razor tip of the spider’s mandible slashes the front of his armour.

“Die, bastard!” he screams. He spins his staff, aiming it towards the spider, and a thick cone of jagged ice forms instantly around the lower half of the creature’s body, immobilising it and allowing Hawke to hit it with a bolt of energy that shatters it and sends limbs flying.

Behind him, another of the poisonous beasts lays, charred and still twitching, on the ground.

The stench that fills the tiny cavern is like burnt hair and nails. It makes Anders want to retch.

Hawke is pale, his face taut with pain, his breath rapid and shallow. Beads of sweat stand out above his upper lip.  
He sways slightly, and Anders catches hold of him before he can fall, helping him gently to a sitting position. 

He fumbles with the straps of the Champion’s armour, suddenly all fingers and thumbs as he tugs ineffectively at a buckle.

“How do you get this bloody thing off? “

“You don’t usually have this much trouble undressing me,“ Hawke observes.

“You’re not usually bleeding.“

“It’s alright love, I can do it myself.“ Hawke reaches for the buckle, and his hand brushes against the healer‘s, feeling it shake.

Beneath the leather armour, a ragged red line snakes across Hawke’s chest, trails of purplish venom already starting to spread out from it, tracing the cobweb patterns of the veins under his skin.

“Fuck, that... _stings!_ ” Hawke lets out a hiss of breath.

“I bet it does.” 

Anders rummages in his pack. He takes out a health potion and holds it to the other man’s lips, watches the way the muscles in his throat work as he swallows, the way a tiny trickle of the liquid spills over his lower lip as he grimaces at the taste of it.

“Keep still, “he says, as he gathers healing energy in his hands.  
Wisps of blue vapour curl around his wrists like chains, encircling them.  
He runs the flat of his hands over the wound, not quite touching it, and Hawke winces at the sensation. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it’s an odd, slightly uncanny feeling - an awareness of things moving inside him, the poison withdrawing, the raw edges of the wound knitting together.  
As the pain subsides, he feels the tension in his muscles loosen, replaced by the slightly buzzy afterglow of healing.

Anders settles back on his heels, his face drawn. He rubs a hand wearily across his honey-coloured eyes.

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” he says.

“I don’t know why you’re saying sorry - he’s the one who ought to apologise.” Hawke gestures towards the remains of the spider.

“I’m the one who dragged you down here in the first place. It’s my fault you’re hurt.”

Hawke doesn’t understand why his lover seems so upset. Injuries are almost an everyday occurrence, for both of them, and Anders has healed him of far worse in the past.

“Look on the bright side,” he says cheerfully. “ At least we’re not digging through shit this time, like we did for the other stuff.”

“I should never have asked you to help me.”

“You know I don’t mind, love.” Hawke smiles. “It will be worth it, when you and Justice are separated.”

Anders looks away, unable to meet his lover‘s eyes.

There have been half truths, in the past, and lies by omission, but when he told Hawke about the potion it was the first time he’d ever looked him in the eyes and lied to him outright.

He’d looked so happy, when he’d told him.

He still looks happy now, despite the dead spiders, and the tear in his favourite armour, and the new scar stiffening across his chest.  
Anders wants to reach out and touch him, but his deception hangs between them, like an invisible barrier, a line that he’s crossed.

Everything’s different now, and for a moment, he can hardly bear it.

“Are you ok to go on?” he asks.

“Lead the way.” 

Hawke stands up and reaches for his staff.

“How much more of this stuff do we need anyway?” 

“Not much more.” 

Anders slings the heavy pack full of Drakestone across his shoulder.

He stares ahead, into the darkness that awaits them.

“Come on,“ he says. “There should be more deposits further in."


	8. Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU Andy again.

Andy likes the fact that Gareth is bigger than him.

There isn’t much difference between them in height, but Gareth is bigger in every other way. His shoulders are wide, his arms and chest heavily muscled. He's built like a rugby player.

Andrew is lean, wiry and snake-hipped. His hands are slender, his fingers long and sensitive where Gareth’s are broad and capable.

Andy likes the way Gareth’s hands look when he touches him. The sight of those big fingers splayed against his bare skin, encircling his wrists or wrapped around his cock, makes his breath come fast and shallow. 

It would be so easy for Gareth to hurt him, if he wanted to.

They play at it sometimes, Gareth pinning him to the bed, holding him down and roughly forcing his legs apart. He whimpers with a need so intense he can hardly endure it, as Gareth's teeth close on the back of his neck and he whispers “I’m going to fuck you so hard. I’m going to fuck you till you scream and beg for me to stop.” 

He doesn’t know why it excites him so much, the pretend threat of violence.  
If he thinks about it too deeply, it makes him feel a bit sick.  
But it’s ok - it’s only a game, and it always ends in laughter and I love you’s, and a line of soft little kisses all the way up his spine. And he trusts Gareth. He feels safe with him.

He knows Gareth would never do anything to hurt him. 

No matter how much he sometimes wants him to.


	9. First  Impressions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

It's Justice who notices him first.

He reacts before Anders even has time to realise what’s happening, his eyes flashing blue-white as he reaches instinctively for his staff.  
Then Anders regains control, and the fadelight flickers out in his eyes, and he finds himself looking at Lucas Hawke for the very first time.

His first impression is that the man must be some sort of idiot.

For a start, he’s obviously a mage - Anders can practically smell the magic on him - but he doesn’t seem to have any idea how dangerous it is for him to be running around Kirkwall like this with his little gang. They’re not exactly inconspicuous, after all, the mage and the dwarf and the strange looking elf with the ridiculous sword. It's a miracle that Hawke hasn't already been dragged off to the Gallows.

Anders can’t afford to keep company with anyone who might attract unwanted attention.

His theory is only confirmed when Hawke starts telling him about his plans for an expedition to the Deep Roads.  
He talks about it as if he’s organising a picnic, and Anders shudders at his naivety.  
“Do you even know what the Deep Roads are?” he asks, and he has to resist the temptation to roll his eyes in exasperation when Hawke just grins and says “They’re my ticket out of Lowtown.”

He’s obviously some sort of idiot.  
The extremely handsome sort, with chestnut hair and eyes like dark brown velvet, and the kind of muscles you usually see on trained warriors rather than apostate mages.

He briefly wonders what the man looks like naked, and then hastily pushes the thought away, feeling guilty. Justice doesn’t like him thinking about that sort of thing. Not when there’s so much to do, and so many more serious matters for him to concern himself with. Like rescuing Karl, for example - he suspects he’ll be walking straight into a trap later that night, and he could really do with some armed back up.

“I’ll help you, if you help me,” he suggests.

*****

Later, after the events of that terrible night, Anders opinion of Hawke gradually begins to change. 

The dark haired man doesn’t run away when he explains about Justice. He’s not afraid.  
He’s sympathetic, and thoughtful, and kind. And he keeps on flirting with him, even at the most inappropriate times. Maybe that should just reinforce Anders' initial opinion of him - the man would have to be stupid, to be attracted to a scruffy apostate with a serious spirit problem - but by now the healer is aware that his first impression was completely wrong.  
Hawke isn’t really an idiot, even though he acts like one sometimes.  
He’s reckless, and driven by a determined optimism that means he doesn’t always think things through properly. And underneath it all he’s just a lost little boy, with too many people depending on him for far too many things.

He needs someone to look out for him.

Anders finds himself agreeing to accompany the expedition. The Deep Roads still haunt his nightmares, and he’d sworn he would never go back there, but suddenly he feels as if he doesn’t have a choice.

He thinks he would probably follow Hawke anywhere.

*****

One of the things Anders had thought he wanted, when he escaped from Kinloch Hold, had been the freedom to fall in love. 

He hadn’t even been sure he’d believed in love - at least not like it was in the novels the apprentices had passed around the dormitories in secret, giggling over the sticky, dog-eared pages with their descriptions of heaving bosoms and throbbing members. Those had been full of dramatic declarations of undying passion, and loves that would last beyond the grave. 

He knew they were just stories, and that real life wasn’t like that, but somehow he’d still dreamed about it, the way he dreamed about feeling the wind in his hair and the rain on his face.

Once he was outside the tower, though, he’d found himself caught up in the same old pattern as before - a slightly blurry succession of encounters that were enjoyable at the time, but ultimately left him feeling even more alone.

He convinced himself it was better that way. Love wasn't for people like him - he was too scarred, too damaged by his time in the Circle. 

He was too afraid.

If you let yourself care for someone, sooner or later they’d be taken away from you. That was just the way it worked.

It had almost come as a relief when Justice convinced him he should forget about that part of his life, and dedicate himself completely to helping the mages. But now that it’s too late and everything is far too complicated, he feels himself falling impossibly, hopelessly, in love with Hawke.

It’s the last thing he needs.

*****

At night, he lays in his makeshift bed in the backroom of the dingy little clinic, conjuring Hawke’s face up out of the darkness as he touches himself. He whispers Hawke’s name into the pillow as he comes, and Justice growls disapprovingly at him, from somewhere in the back of his mind.

 _It’s all right,_ he reassures himself. _It’s not like I’m going to do anything about it. I won’t even tell him how I feel..._

He keeps on telling himself that, every night, for the next three years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, you can see a (really bad) picture of Lucas Hawke, and a little drabble to go with it, here:
> 
> http://accidentalxxx.tumblr.com/post/18568134828/lucas-hawke-i-know-ive-posted-this-terrible


	10. Just a touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

Anders doesn’t like feeling helpless.

He helps people, it’s what he does, and it doesn’t come easily to him to watch anyone suffer. Especially when it’s the man he loves.

He sits in the dark, his knees drawn up against his chest, and watches over Hawke, the way he‘s watched over him every night since his mother died.

It’s odd, he thinks, the sort of details that come back to him as he sits there.  
The stains on the walls, and the sickening smells of blood and unclean magic.  
Fenris, beside him, cursing softly in Arcanum.  
And then the look on Hawke’s face, as the thing that was somehow, shockingly, still Leandra had turned towards them.

Maker knows, Anders has seen enough awful things to provide him with several lifetimes worth of nightmares, but that look wouldn’t leave him alone. It burnt itself into the back of his eyes, and left scars.  
No one should ever look like that.

There should have been something he could do, but he hadn’t been able to help Leandra, and now he couldn’t help Hawke.

Beside him, Lucas shifts in his sleep, and mumbles something indistinct that sounds like it could be “I’m sorry,“ and a single tear makes it’s way slowly down his face.

During the day, Hawke doesn’t allow himself tears.  
The burden of being the eldest son, the ‘man of the family’ from such a young age, is too deeply ingrained in him, and now there’s no one left to be strong for he still clings to it, because it’s all he knows. 

“I’m here for you,” the healer promises him. “Whatever you need.” But Hawke turns away from him and doesn’t respond. His movements are stiff and slow, carefully controlled, as if he‘s in pain. His face is an expressionless mask.

Anders aches to hold him, but he doesn’t, because he knows what it’s like, when the façade is the only thing holding you together, and just a touch or a whispered word of comfort might be enough to shatter you into a thousand jagged little splinters. 

So he sits in the dark and watches over him, and when his lover turns to him instinctively in his sleep, he takes him in his arms.

“…Anders…” 

“I’m here, love.”

_Whatever you need._

He wipes the tear from Hawke’s face, and strokes his hair, and soothes him with soft caresses that, by the morning, will be just another dream. 

It’s not enough, it’s _nothing,_ but it’s all he can do. And when he finally falls asleep, he dreams of being helpless, and of things he can’t heal.


	11. Karl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU Andy.  
> Warning - contains a reference to implied non-con/dub con.

Andy was nineteen when he first met Karl - tall and skinny, with a tangle of messy blond hair that fell down over his eyes and almost hid the bruises around them. 

They’d met in the same emergency department he works in now, the same place he met Gareth, though the circumstances had been very different. That time, Andy had been the patient, and Karl was the one who’d patched him up, gently cleaning his cuts and bruises .  
He’d been kind, in a businesslike sort of way, and he’d made a point of not asking any awkward questions, and afterwards, because he was hungry and skint and feeling a bit weird and lost, Andy had let the man take him to the greasy little café across the road and buy him a sandwich.

Andy sat hunched over his tea, his body language tense and jittery, his eyes guarded. He’d poured a ridiculous amount of sugar into the mug, and now he picked at the empty sachets, tearing them first into strips, and then again, into tiny pieces that he arranged in a pile in the middle of the table.

Karl watched, and thought there was something feral about him. He reminded him of a stray cat he’d taken in once, a scruffy, prickly little ginger thing, all skin and bones and attitude.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the police?” he asked him.

“What’s the point?” Andrew shook his head without looking up from his pile of shredded paper. “It was just some guy…”

 _Or two guys, to be more precise,_ he thought. Big bastards - army types, by the look of them. One of them had spat in his face, and it was like he could still feel it, warm and sickening, against his skin. He’d held him down, gripping his wrists and laughing, while the other one… 

No, he wasn‘t going to think about it, not now.

It was no big deal. It wasn’t even like it was the first time it had happened.

_Hazards of the job,_ he told himself bitterly.

He pulled his jacket more tightly around himself so that it covered the brownish stains that spotted his hoodie, and sipped cautiously at his tea, wincing slightly as the hot liquid touched his split lip.

“Do you have somewhere to go tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m…. I’ll find somewhere,” he said.

He glanced towards the door and the darkening streets that lay beyond it, feeling a growing sense of despair. He really didn’t want to go back out there. He knew from past experience that bruises only tended to attract more of the same thing - it was a natural law, like gravity or something. And he was so tired of it all, tired of being cold and hungry and never really feeling safe, and of all the things he had to do to survive.

The nurse said “I’ve got a spare room. You can stay at mine if you like.”

“What are you, some kind of fucking social worker?”

Andy kept his face carefully blank, but couldn‘t entirely stop the sneer from creeping into his voice. They were always the worst, the ones who pretended they cared, the ones who bought you a MacDonald’s like they were doing you some kind of big fucking favour, and then thought it gave them the right to take out all their messed up shit on you.

He almost laughed out loud.

“I’m just trying to help,” the man said.

“Yeah, right…” 

Andy looked up through his hair at the other man, studying him properly for the first time. He was wearing one of those parka’s with the fur around the hood, and the blue of his nurses uniform showed through where it was open at the neck.  
He couldn‘t have been more than thirty at the most, but there were already traces of grey in his beard.  
His eyes were dark, keen and piercing, and Andy felt oddly exposed, looking into them. X-ray eyes. It was like the guy could see right through him. 

His shoulders slumped. He was too tired to pretend any more. 

He felt like he was going to cry.

He sat with his hands over his face, struggling to stay in control, while the nurse - Karl, he’d said his name was - got up from the table and came back a minute later with another cup of tea and another big handful of packs of sugar that he put down in front of Andy.

“I know it’s not always easy to believe,” he said, “but sometimes people really are just nice.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Andy muttered, already ripping the top from another sachet of sugar.

“That‘s ok then.” 

Karl smiled at him. 

“I hope you don’t mind cats,” he said.


	12. Letting go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU Andy again.

“Hi.”

Andrew bent down to plant a brief kiss on Karl’s forehead, and then crossed the tiny room to put the vase of flowers he was carrying down on the windowsill, where they‘d catch the light.  
Sunflowers. They both liked Sunflowers. Karl often stopped to buy a bunch on his way past the market. He always said they brightened the place up.

“Sorry I was a bit longer than I said I‘d be,” Andy said. “Mr Snuffles somehow managed to get himself stuck behind the wardrobe, I had to lure him out. And then there was that woman - you know, the blonde one two doors down who’s always complaining? I couldn’t get away from her. She gave me a card, for you, but I…“ His voice faltered. “I don‘t know what I did with it.”

He turned to look at Karl.

He looked exactly the same as he had for the past three days. The same as he always did, really, except for all the wires and the plastic tubes. 

There wasn’t a mark on him. It would have been easier to believe it was real if there’d been some sort of visible damage, but as it was, Andy felt like he was trapped in a particularly surreal nightmare. 

None of this could possibly be happening, and yet somehow it was.

It wasn’t fair.

Andy sat down on the edge of the bed, and combed Karl’s hair back with his fingers. Then he lay down beside him, curling up on top of the thin blanket, careful not to displace any of the equipment.  
He pressed his face into Karl’s neck, rubbing his cheek against the soft hair of the man's beard, the way he always did when he needed reassurance. Even now, like this, there was something comforting about just being close to him.

“I miss you,” he said. 

Beside him, the ventilator hissed and whirred.

Andy closed his eyes.


	13. Marked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

The first time they beat him, Anders wasn’t prepared for it.

He’d expected it to hurt, obviously, but after the first few shocking strokes, the pain was overwhelming. It was everywhere at once, and there was no escape from it.  
He lost control.  
He’d told himself that he wouldn’t scream or cry, but he did, and he hated himself for it, even as he swore at them and begged them to stop.

The pain had come as a shock, but what he really hadn’t been prepared for was the humiliation he felt. 

When they loosened the chains on his wrists and took him down, his legs gave way. He collapsed to the floor and vomited. The Templars stood around him, talking idly among themselves, seemingly unconcerned.

He felt their eyes on him as he lay, shivering in his smallclothes on the cold stones.

“It’s not fair,” he told Karl the next day. “They can just do that to you, and you can‘t do anything about it! They’re _allowed_ to do it. It’s…” he struggled to find the right word. “It’s _unjust.”_

Karl stroked his hair. “You should try to keep still,” he told him. “If you keep moving about like that it will take longer to heal. The scars will be worse.”

“I can’t!”

The anger and outrage and fear fizzed and bubbled in him, until he felt like he might explode.  
The urge to throw a fireball at something was almost unbearable.

He needed to know what they’d done to him. 

There were no mirrors in the apprentices dormitory. He lifted his shirt, slowly, up over his head, holding it away from his body. The thin fabric clung sickeningly to the wounds on his back, tearing at them, and the skin across his shoulders pulled tight as he moved. 

“Tell me what it looks like,” he said.

“Anders, don’t. You‘ll hurt yourself.”

“Please, Karl…”

Karl didn’t answer, and Anders turned to look at him, quick enough to catch the bright shimmer of tears in the man’s dark eyes.

 _They’ve made me ugly,_ he thought.  
 _No one else will want me now._

_They’ve made me theirs._

 

*****

When Hawke touches the scars on his back, Anders feels himself tense. 

He holds his breath. He tries not to, but he can’t help it, and he knows the other man is aware of it.

He feels the tickle of hair against his back, the slight rasp of stubble, as Hawke presses soft lips to his spine, between his shoulder blades.

“Lucas, don’t…”

“You’re ashamed of them, aren’t you?” Hawke says.

“They’re not exactly attractive, are they?” Anders’ mouth twists bitterly. He doesn’t like to admit how much it bothers him. 

“We’ve both got more than our share of scars, love.”

“Yours are different,” he says. “They’re battle scars. They’re…cleaner, somehow. No one ever held you down and beat you like a stray dog, “ 

“You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

Anders turns his face into the pillow. 

“They made me ugly,” he says miserably. “They marked me as theirs.”

 

Hawke continues to stroke Anders’ shoulder blades, his hands big and warm and astonishingly gentle as they move in soothing circles over the mage’s skin.  
He examines the marks that crisscross his lovers back.  
Most of them are smooth and silvery, mother of pearl against the healer’s pale Anderfels complexion, but some are darker, raised and uneven. He feels the pattern they make beneath his fingertips, like reading a map.

Anders’ journey, the paths that led him here to Kirkwall and to Hawke, mapped out in scars.

He wishes Anders could see himself, the way he sees him.

He lowers himself down beside him, so that they’re face to face. Anders’ eyes are closed, his eyelashes spidery, wet with tears.

“Do you want to know what I see, when I look at your scars?” Hawke doesn’t wait for an answer. “I see how strong and brave and beautiful you are,” he goes on. “Yours are battle scars too, love. You never stopped fighting. You’re still fighting them every day.”

He takes the healer’s face between his hands, and kisses him softly until the mage opens his eyes and looks at him.

“You were never theirs, Anders,” he says. “You were never anyone’s.”

Anders turns and reaches for his lover, pulling him into a crushing embrace.  
He kisses Hawke fiercely, and whispers against his lips, “Until now.”


	14. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

In his dream, Anders walks through a landscape painted entirely in shades of red.

Kirkwall is burning; the streets are slippery beneath his feet, the walls graffitied in blood. Corpses lay steaming in the gutters, some of them charred and twisted, others resembling lumps of raw meat.  
Images burn themselves into his eyes, imprint themselves onto him - a face with a gaping black hole where it’s mouth should be; a hand, the fingers still curled tight around something that was once precious.  
Templar armour, bloodied and blackened, piled abandoned by a wall.  
Crows hop and dance in the puddles and their feet leave bloody little trails, a line of arrows pointing from one dead body to the next.

He is like a crow himself now; a ragged black thing, all smoke and shadow, the taste of blood on his tongue.

His heart is almost bursting with joy.

He looks around at the carnage and laughs.

***

Anders wakes up with the laughter still clawing it’s way out of him, strangled and stillborn; not quite a scream.  
He opens his eyes to see Hawke’s face, bathed in the afterglow of the light that is still fading from his own skin. Ghostlight, reflected in the whites of Hawke’s eyes.  
Half asleep, he says something in Anders, and can‘t remember what his own words mean. 

“It’s all right, sweetheart.” Hawke reassures him.“You were having a nightmare, that‘s all. You’re safe.”

The sweat that clings in beads to his neck and chest turns cold, and he struggles to sit up, aware of Hawke’s hands, holding him, or maybe just holding him down.

He is not safe. He can never be safe. 

He shouldn’t be here - even asleep, he can no longer trust himself. And he can still see it, behind his eyes - the city walls daubed with strange symbols, dripping red; the twisted metal and torn flesh.  
The laughter threatens to escape again, only this time it’s horrified and hysterical, and he bites his tongue.

 _This is not me,_ he tells himself, desperately. _I’m a good man. I help people…_ but the words are meaningless. He doesn’t know what he is, half the time.  
Even his dreams are no longer his own.

He reaches for Hawke, more roughly than he intends to; burying his face against the man’s shoulder, losing himself in the closeness of him, the warmth, the sweat and the breath of him.  
When he feels himself getting hard, he is appalled. He feels fractured, unhinged; the red dream still echoing through his head like a scream. He groans and presses himself against his lover’s naked flesh, trembling with a mixture of fear and need and self loathing.  
Hawke’s kisses are soft as a whisper, sweet as a sigh against his lips. His big hands are gentle as they slide across the blond’s skin.  
“Hush love,” he murmurs. “ It’s all right, let me do this for you, let me make you feel better…” And Anders lets him comfort him, and hates himself for it.

***

“When I was little, I used to have a recurring nightmare,” Hawke tells him, as they lay in each others arms.

“It was about wolves. I’d heard the grown-ups talking about them, but I’d never actually seen one, and I wasn’t really sure what they were. For some reason I pictured them looking something like Mabari, but walking upright, and wearing clothes. Every night for weeks I had nightmares about being chased around the village by a Mabari in his best feastday suit.”  
Anders can’t help chuckling at the image.  
A memory of his own surfaces, and he’s ten years old again, keeping watch over the goat pen at night while the animals were in kid. Flickering torchlight, raw red hands pulled up inside the sleeves of his fur-lined jacket, his breath hanging in frigid white clouds around his face. Even with the night so cold it hurt his throat to breathe, he’d struggled to stay awake, nodding off every now and then only to be woken with a start by the desolate howling that was always much too close for comfort. 

“ Our Anders wolves could eat your little Fereldan puppydogs for breakfast,” he says, with a shiver.

“Maybe, but I bet they don’t dress half as stylishly. ”

Their hands find each other, fingers lacing together beneath the sheets. 

“Mother used to say that if you tell someone your bad dreams, they won’t come back.”  
There's a strained note to Hawke's voice that is always there when he talks about Leandra, as if he has to make an effort, has to think about shaping the words with his tongue. No one else would probably notice it, but Anders always does. It makes his chest ache.

“My mother used to say that too.” Anders smiles into the darkness, at the memory, and at something shared between them - something they’d both had, before all they had was each other. 

“It doesn‘t work,” he added. 

“No, I know.” Hawke’s arm tightens around him. “It was my clumsy way of saying that if you want to talk about it, I‘m here. I‘ll always be here.”

“There’s no need,“ he says flatly. “It was just a nightmare. It’s gone.” 

He’s glad he has the darkness to hide him. It sickens him, the way lies come almost as easily as kisses to his lips now, but he can’t talk about it, even to Hawke. Talking about it would mean admitting how fragile his sense of his own identity has become; how he struggles to sort through his own thoughts, desperate to hold onto anything he‘s sure is really his.

How he feels like he’s losing himself, a little bit at a time.

_And what if it was my dream?_

 _What if it’s only ever been me?_

Hawke is the only certainty he has left; the only thing he can cling to.

He shifts uncomfortably, twisting until the fancy silk sheets become a sweaty, tangled nest.

“Do you want me to make you some tea?” Lucas asks. “I could put some Brandy in it.”  
Anders shakes his head. “I don’t want to let go of you,” he says, and out loud, the words somehow sound less desperate than they did in his head.

“Then don’t, “ Hawke tells him, and his voice breaks a little bit. “Don’t let go, love.”

And Anders swears to himself that he’ll hold on, for as long as he possibly can. Because if there's any hope left for him at all, it is Hawke.


	15. The Only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.
> 
> This chapter is for Combination_NC, because it's her birthday.

“I bet you anything you like he‘s a virgin.”

Anders leaned back in his chair, his voice soft, a wicked little smile playing at the corners of his lips as he glanced toward the Templar standing guard at the door of the library.  
Ser Stefan was new to Kinloch Hold, and anyone new was a target for gossip and speculation. He was also rather handsome, when you saw him without his stupid bucket hat. It was a combination that made him fascinating to Anders, who was always bored and in need of something to amuse him.

“Look at him,” he went on. "He blushes every time I glance in his direction. It‘s funny.”

Karl sighed. “He’s a Templar, Anders. You know it’s not a good idea to get involved with the screws. It‘s much too dangerous.”

“You know me - I laugh in the face of danger. Anyway, I wasn’t planning on 'getting involved', whatever that means. A quick shag in a broom cupboard would do; it’s not like I’m asking him to marry me.”  
He smirked, and Karl looked away, pretending to study the book that lay open on the table in front of him, trying not to see the expression on Anders‘ face.

Karl didn’t know what it was called, the feeling he sometimes got when Anders looked at other people. He tried not to think about it enough to give it a name. It was hypocritical anyway; he had his own share of encounters. They all did.

But he couldn't help it. He wanted to be the only one Anders looked at like that.

He tried to be patient, and sensible, and calm, because he knew that was what Anders needed from him, but Maker knows, it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes he just wanted to grab the boy by the collar of his robe and give him a damn good shake. And sometimes he just wanted to pull him close, right there, in front of everyone, and kiss him until his lips were sore.

“They’re all the same, Anders,” he said bitterly." It’s really not worth it. Anyway I don’t see why it’s such a big deal - It’s not like you’ve never sucked Templar cock before.” 

He knew, before the words were even halfway out of his mouth, that it was a terrible thing to say. It was unforgivable. Something dark and raw flashed deep in Anders’ eyes, and then the mask come down; the face he wore for other people.

“Maybe I’d just like it to be my choice, for a change,” he said, his casual tone almost convincing.  
A dull ache started in Karl’s chest, radiating out until it reached all the way through him.  
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it…” He reached for Anders’ hand beneath the table, and felt it pull away. Anders stood up. The stiffness in his back as he walked away , the upward tilt of his chin, was heartbreaking. 

***

It proved easy enough for Anders to get the Templar on his own. Later that afternoon, he spotted the newcomer in a corridor looking lost, and offered to show him to the room he was looking for.  
“My name’s Anders, by the way,” he offered, as he led the young man on a deliberately confusing journey through the tower.  
“I know,” Ser Stefan said. “I’ve heard about you."  
The blond mage couldn’t quite suppress the smile that sprung to his lips. Obviously they talked about him, the Templars. No one else had ever escaped the circle as many times as he had. He was probably famous.

“Well, here we are!” Anders opened the door to one of the storerooms with a flourish, and ushered the man inside. 

Stefan looked confused. “Are you sure this is right?”

“Oops, sorry, wrong room…” Anders mumbled, pulling the door shut behind him and placing himself strategically in front of it.

“What are you doing?” 

The Templar’s hand hovered like a bird, fluttered uncertainly above the hilt of his sword.  
Anders heart beat frantically against his ribcage. He was breathless; more from fear than lust, if he was honest - just the fact of being in an enclosed space with someone wearing Templar armour was enough to make his palms sweat. He wanted this though - it was his choice. He was determined to seduce one of his jailers, to _make_ them want him. And fear and lust didn’t feel all that different, really. There were occasions when he could hardly tell them apart.

“I don’t think we’re really going to be needing that,” he said. 

He reached for the man’s hand, carefully moving it away from his sword, placing it somewhere slightly less sharp and a lot more interesting.  
He felt the steel plane of the Templar’s breastplate, cold and unyielding, beneath his palm. His fingers traced the outline of the sword of mercy.  
 _Let’s see that mighty weapon of yours, Ser extremely Shaggable,_ he thought to himself, and almost giggled out loud.

_I can do this._

_I want to do this._

The Templar groaned, and clutched a fistful of Anders’ robe, and the blond felt a shiver of excitement down his spine. He reached up to touch Stefan’s face.

“So, " he said, "are you going to fuck me, or what?"

It was different to the other times, he told himself; subversive, somehow. He was the one with the power this time - he could see it in the man’s eyes, blue and Lyrium bright, the hunger shining out of them; he could hear it in the sharp intake of his breath.  
He definitely wasn’t going to think about what Karl said.

He wasn’t going to think about Karl at all.

It was almost too easy. Ser Stefan turned out to be far less innocent than his delicate complexion had led Anders to imagine. He fucked the mage thoroughly and efficiently against the wall, one hand clamped over Anders‘ mouth, the other wrapped around his thigh, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises.  
Anders’ legs shook as he thrust into his own fist, and he cried out against the Templar’s hand. He felt an arm around his waist, pulling him back hard against the other man’s body, breath suddenly hot against his neck as Ser Stefan reached a shuddering climax inside him. He moaned, and stroked himself faster, almost at the edge, almost over.

“They told me about you.” 

The voice was hoarse, mouth pressed up close against his ear, and Anders felt himself tense, suddenly wary.

“They said you liked Templar cock.”

The Templar stepped back, pulling out and wiping himself on Anders’ robe. Anders stood paralysed with his hand still around his rapidly softening cock, hardly daring to breathe as the man leaned in close again. The sneer in the Templar’s voice was unmistakable.

“They said you were a dirty little mage slut who couldn‘t get enough of it,” he breathed.

“Oh, that lot..." It took every ounce of strength and self control Anders could find, to keep his voice light and seemingly careless. “Honestly, you can’t believe a word they say. I mean, they told me you had a big dick.” 

He flinched, expecting a fist in the face, but it never came, and when he opened his eyes again, the Templar was rearranging his skirts, almost tripping over his own boots in his haste to get away. He stumbled, reached out a hand to steady himself against the doorway.

“Oops, mind you don’t break something,” Anders aimed at his back. "Like your vows, for example?”  
Stefan turned around, his face flushed pink again. It was obviously just his skin type.

“Don’t fuck with me, mage,” he said, with a curl of his lip. “You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Anders already wished he hadn’t.  
As soon as the Templar was out of sight, he sunk to his knees on the floor, his legs trembling uncontrollably. 

_Fucking tinhead bastards. Karl was right; they’re all the same._

Karl was almost always right. Suddenly Anders felt like he couldn’t do without him.  
The others were diversions, something to distract him from the ache in his limbs and the constant itching inside his head. They were just a way to stop himself thinking, for a few minutes at a time at least.  
Karl was different. Karl was the only thing that made any of this even slightly bearable.

He pulled himself shakily to his feet and straightened his robes. He desperately needed to wash, needed to scrub the feel of Ser Stefan off him. And then he needed to find Karl, and make everything all right.

***

Karl was in his quarters, the flimsy curtains that separated his bed from the rest of the room pulled as far closed as they’d go. Anders could still see him through them, his legs stretched out in front of him on the narrow bed, his head bent over a book. A single candle burnt on the table beside him, black smoke curling up in spirals from the wick.  
He looked up as Anders’ shadow fell across the page. “ Anders, I was looking for you...” 

“Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy.” Anders felt his face going red. He sat down on the edge of the bed and hugged his knees.

“I wanted to say I was sorry,“ Karl went on. “For earlier. It was an awful thing to say. I didn‘t mean it, I was...”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. It was unforgiveable.”

Anders shook his head. “I’m just as bad. I’m ten times worse, actually. I only fucked him because I knew you didn’t want me to. I can’t… I don’t know why I…” His face crumpled. “Why am I like this?”  
He rolled onto his side, curling up wretchedly, and Karl could smell it on him - someone else’s sweat, someone else’s come. Loneliness and desolation. There were bruises on his knees.  
The Enchanter reached out and took him in his arms. He felt bony and awkward, all angles and sharp edges. He fit perfectly.

“It’s not you, sweetheart, “he said. “It’s just... this place. It twists everything,” he said. “It shouldn‘t be like this; everything‘s wrong.”

“I know,” Anders whispered.

“We shouldn’t talk like this here - somebody might hear us.”

Karl wrapped his arms around Anders chest, holding him close and feeling the flutter of his heartbeat, like wings against the bars of a cage. He lifted the younger man’s hair, pressing his lips softly against his neck, and Anders sighed and stretched out slowly, the tension gradually starting to drain from his muscles.

“Karl, you’re the only one..." Anders stopped himself, biting his tongue before the words in his head could become something real.

“The only what?”

 _The only one who really touches me,_ he wanted to say. _The only one who can make me feel like a real person. The only one that matters._

He rubbed his face gently against the older man’s beard, and stroked the hair back from his face. Soft touches, to take the place of all the words he would never say.

“Sometimes i think you’re the only one in this forsaken bloody place who isn’t a complete and utter bastard,” he said.  
And Karl felt Anders lips against his, and somehow knew exactly what he meant.


	16. Pounce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy. 
> 
> This chapter is for Gerec and Kiva, who were both kind enough to say they wanted more of him :-)

A month after Karl’s death, Andy goes back to work.

It's difficult, at first. Everyone in the department loved Karl, and they’re all so nice to him; they bake him cakes, and make him cups of tea, and invite him over for dinner. And he’s grateful for it, he really is, but somehow their kindness only makes it harder. It constantly reminds him of what he has lost.  
When they ask him how he’s doing, he just shrugs and doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel.  
There’s a cold weight in his chest, something heavy and hard in the place where his heart used to be.  
Most of the time he doesn’t feel anything at all. 

After work, he walks back across the park to the drab seventies tower block where he lives. Karl’s flat, the home they shared for the past six years.  
Andy had been there for over a year before they first slept together. Karl had looked after him. He’d fed him, and listened when he needed to talk, and left him alone when he needed his space. It was Karl who had encouraged him to go back to college and finish his education, and he'd been so happy when Andy decided he wanted to go into nursing too.  
The first time they fucked, Andy wondered out loud why it had taken them so long, and Karl told him he’d have waited twenty years, if that was how long it took to be sure Andy knew what he wanted.

“You’d still have been worth every minute,” he said.

The lift in the block hasn’t worked for ages, and the stairs smell like pee. Andy is miles away, adrift in his memories; he almost jumps out of his skin when he sees the cat standing there at the foot of the stairway. 

The animal doesn’t make a sound; just stares at him out of peculiar eyes that are the colour of milky coffee. It’s a skinny creature, uncared for; it’s fur thin and matted, it’s belly a little round lump that seems to roll from side to side as it walks.

The poor thing looks half starved.

When they'd first met, Karl had jokingly compared Andy to a half wild cat. He'd always liked to look after waifs and strays.  
Karl would have taken the scruffy little thing home and given it a bowl of milk. 

“Sorry cat, “he says. “I haven’t got anything for you.”

He feels it’s eyes on his back as he climbs the stairs.

***

A few nights later the cat is there again, waiting; a little white ghost haunting the hallway at the bottom of the staircase. Andy almost trips over it in the dark. 

He leans back against the wall, unsteady on his feet, starting to come down from whatever those pills had been. His ears are ringing, his head full of cotton wool. The night comes back to him in a succession of blurry images - harsh fluorescent lighting and the sound of his own laughter, distant and disconnected. An unfamiliar tongue in his mouth. Hot, fumbling hands on his dick. 

The cat looks up at him, silent and accusing. 

He scowls. “What do you want from me?”

There are tins of cat food upstairs, in the flat. He could easily bring some out for her. Or he could take her in and keep her warm, line a shoebox with an old towel to make a bed.  
He could take care of her, if his heart hadn‘t turned to stone.

“I can’t look after you,” he says. “I can’t even look after my fucking self.”

Inside, he curls up in a ball on top of the bed, wrapped tight around the cold ache in his chest. Phantom pain, like a missing limb. It astonishes him, that the absence of something can hurt so much. 

*** 

He looks for her, the next day, on his way back from the corner shop where he’s stocked up on junk food and painkillers, teabags, a bottle of vodka.  
There’s no sign of her anywhere. He calls out “Hey, cat!", feeling self-conscious, and a group of kids - big boys on bikes that look too small for them - laugh at him and then move on.  
When they’ve gone, Andy gradually becomes aware of a faint sound, almost like a little bird chirping. It takes him a minute to track it down to a cupboard under the stairs. The door is broken and hanging almost off it’s hinges, and inside he can just make out a bundle of dirty rags, three tiny shapes nesting among them.  
He reaches in to touch them.  
Two of the kittens are stiff and cold. He picks up the third one carefully, and it gives a little jump, it’s front legs flying out stiffly, as if it’s trying to pounce. 

The kitten fits easily into the palm of Andy’s hand, and the feel of it, the floppy little body like a badly filled beanbag, is strangely familiar. It reminds him of the toy tiger he won on one of those grabbing machines at the seaside when he was a child. He still remembers the way he held his breath as the metal claw closed around the furry orange head, and only let it out again once the toy was safely in his hands.  
He’d loved that little tiger - for years he‘d fallen asleep with it clasped in one hand. When they came and took him away, he’d taken it with him, but it wasn’t long before it got lost or stolen. It had been almost impossible to hang on to anything you cared about, in that place. 

The kitten twitches in his hand and stretches it’s neck; eyes blind, head too big for it’s body. He feels the fragile heartbeat against the palm of his hand. A shrivelled stump of umbilical cord protrudes from it’s belly, and Andy wonders what happened to the mother cat.  
 _She wouldn’t have just gone off and left them, not if she had any choice,_ he thinks.

_He wouldn't have just gone off and left me..._

“Poor little thing,” he says. “You’re all alone, aren‘t you.”

He cups his other hand protectively over the soft little body, trying to keep it warm.

“It'll be all right sweetie,” he tells it. “I’ll look after you." 

The teardrop that splashes against the back of his own hand takes him by surprise.

For the first time in a month, he lets himself cry.


	17. quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

The first time, the sound of his own voice disturbs him. He can’t believe it’s him, so needy and desperate; all his years of longing and loneliness laid bare with just one word.

Anders turns his face into the pillow, pressing the back of his hand against his lips to muffle his own cries .  
He remembers the little shushing sounds Karl used to make as he explored his body, the way he’d silence him with a kiss if he cried out too loudly.  
Other, less gentle, memories, come to the surface too; a metal gauntlet clamped against bloodied lips; his mouth stuffed with filthy rags.

When Hawke moves his hands away from his face and kisses them, he has to remind himself, again, that this is real.

“Please,” Hawke says. “I want to hear you…”

Anders’ lips shape his lover’s name, silently at first, then as a breathy whisper. When Hawke’s mouth closes on the skin of his throat he moans out loud. It’s thrilling and terrifying at the same time, giving so much of himself away. It feels like freedom.

 

***

At night, they draw the curtains closed, shut themselves away in their own world, a million miles from Kirkwall and it’s politics and bloodthirsty intrigue, it‘s madness.

Neither of them are quiet now. Anders curses; Hawke pleads. There are sighs, and sharp cries muffled against flesh; breaths torn, ragged and trembling, from bruised lips.  
Safe behind the draping tapestries, they whisper their secrets into the dark.

Hawke doesn’t stop talking.  
“Sometimes I swear I can taste the fade on you,” he says. “Your skin tastes like lightning, like a storm out at sea.”  
He kisses the scars on Anders’ back and tells him he’s beautiful. He maps out constellations in the freckles on his chest, tells him his eyes shine like stars. He says he loves the bones of him, and Anders clings to the sound of his voice as if it’s the only thing that can keep him from drowning.

And afterwards, for a while, it’s quiet.  
Everything stops; all the questions and the doubts - the compulsion to analyse every thought, searching for the cracks in his own logic, for signs that his mind is not his own.  
The night wraps around them; still, and soft as velvet, and falling asleep in Hawke’s arms is the closest thing to peace Anders has ever known.


	18. Runaway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

 

He remembers the bird.  
  
The  flash of sunlight on wings, as it circled into view, and the way it seemed to hang, almost motionless, above him, the wind barely stirring it’s feathers.  
  
It was his own fault. He’d only meant to stop for a minute or two, to rest his legs, but he was dog tired and once he stopped, it was hard to get moving again. The grass was soft and ticklish against his skin, the lush green scent of it almost intoxicating. It was good to just lay there and _breathe_.  
  
Anders squinted up into the bright sky. Wisps of cloud, edged in gold and silver, moved across it, blowing like tattered scraps of sail on the  warm breeze.  
  
He’d forgotten how big the sky was; how impossibly far away. It almost made him dizzy to look at it. You could lose yourself in a sky like that, he thought. You could stare into the endless blue until it felt like you were falling, forever.

The hawk suddenly dipped and whirled, and the speed of it, the sheer elegance of it’s movements took his breath away. He reached out a hand towards it, but it was already gone. And then the Silence struck, so fast he never knew what hit him.  
  
  
  
***  
  
He tries to remember. Yellow broom and dusky heather, the distant pine forests a charcoal smudge against the horizon.  
  
It’s getting difficult to concentrate.  
  
 _Scent of lavender and wild thyme, birdsong; the breeze, like gentle fingers through his hair._  
  
The cuffs dig into his wrists. Funny that he’d even be aware of that, with his back and shoulders open almost to the bone, but it’s one more inescapable, intolerable thing, like his raw throat and the ache in his arms, the slow trickle of blood down the back of his legs.  
  
 _Flash of wings as they catch the sun…_  
  
He knows about pain; knows it’s better if you don’t fight it, if you give yourself up to it and let it have it’s way with you. He hangs like a dead weight in his chains. The night is waiting for him, the endless sky; he could fall into the darkness as if it was a lover’s feather bed.  
  
He thinks about the bird, adrift in an azure sky; wings outstretched and the wind rushing through them, and he remembers what freedom felt like.  
  
The whip hisses and cracks, and he tenses, feels the razors edge again, the hungry flames, and _Oh maker I can’t endure this, I can’t…   Please make it stop._  
  
There’s a hollow ringing in his ears. His vision fades. For a second, he feels himself hanging, suspended above the emptiness, and then he lets go, and he’s falling. 

He's flying.

Anders closes his eyes, and sees the sky again.  
  
  
  



	19. Survival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andy. Trigger warning for dub con.

 

He shifts uncomfortably under the stranger‘s gaze, shoves his hands down deep into the pockets of his jeans, seeking out the comfort of hipbones sharp as knives. He’s been in a hundred rooms like this - the details change, but they’re all the same in the end; stained sheets, the smell of rubber, of stale sweat and amyl nitrate.  
  
“What’s your name?” the man asks, as if it matters.  
  
“Danny,” he mumbles.  A fake name, a smile like broken glass. An empty space for them to fill up with their dog-eared little fantasies.  
  
The man passes him a bottle, and Andy tilts it to his lips, swallowing greedily. A few months ago he wouldn’t have done that - it’s not safe, you need your wits about you. But It’s getting harder every day to make himself care.  
  
Anyway, it’s better like this; sort of blurred around the edges.  
  
The man looks him up and down; everywhere but his eyes.  
  
“Take your shirt off, Danny.”  
  
“Money first.”  
  
Andy slips the notes into his pocket without counting them, reaches for the bottle again and drinks until his head spins. Goosebumps pimple his bare flesh, and the shame twists like a knife in his guts; cheap vodka on an empty stomach.  
  
Danny does what he’s told. He lays back on the unmade bed, spreads his legs, like a good boy.  
  
He remembers a film he saw on TV once, back in the children’s home. It was about these robots, but they didn't feel like robots. They had dreams and hopes and memories, like real people.  
  
They felt like they were real people.  
  
He doesn’t know what made him think of that now.  
  
He doesn’t feel anything at all.  
  



	20. Tranquility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

They talked about it, him and Karl. In their secret room, in a corner lit by a wisp of soft magelight, they whispered to each other, though there was no one there to hear.

“Once you pass your harrowing you have nothing to fear - they can’t do it to you then,” Karl said. 

“Maybe the fear of it’s worse than the reality. Like getting a tooth pulled.” 

Anders thought of all the times when the desperate pull of freedom in his veins felt like too much to bear. It was a torment, an ache that he couldn‘t relieve. He thought of the endless drag of hours into days and days into years, the unfairness of it all; the blood-red raw, ragged ends of his nerves, and the way everything hurt _all the time._

There were days when he was so tired of it all - of running, of resisting, of pacing the corridors like a trapped animal, wanting to claw the walls with his nails. 

“Do you think they’re peaceful?” he asked.

Karl thought it might be a bit like sleepwalking; like being halfway between dreams and waking.

He‘d read a book once, about dragonflies. Dragonfly larvae lived underwater. When it was time to leave their chrysalis, some of them didn’t make it out - they got stuck halfway, in an incomplete, inbetween state, neither one thing or the other.

That was how he imagined the Tranquil - trapped halfway between the living and the dead.

He looked at Anders, curled like a cat in his chair; at his beautiful hands and the bones in his wrists and the way his robe was pulled up over pale shins dusted with yellow hair; at the autumn sunshine colours of him, all russet and copper and gold.

He tried to imagine looking at Anders and feeling nothing at all.

“What if it’s better?” Anders whispered. “What if it’s better than this?”

“It’s not,” Karl shuddered. “Feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. If you don’t feel anything, you might as well be dead.”

 

***

The demon was completely predictable, in the terrible way of such creatures.

It offered Anders freedom. It showed him the world, in a dizzying sweep that took in continents; cities and seas and all the empty places between laid out like a banquet beneath him. It filled his head with visions of wild magic, and of all the things he knew he’d never experience in the Circle tower

It was beautiful. It’s voice was like the sound of the wind in the trees.  
Anders knew what it was. He looked the demon in the eyes and said no, and then he woke up screaming. The sound was so anguished and unearthly that the Templar standing guard over him unsheathed his sword, ready to swing it down on Anders’ neck. He would have done, if Knight Commander Greagoir hadn’t shushed him and steadied his arm.

Anders screamed and howled.

Once in a while, a mage would be so traumatised by their harrowing, they would completely lose their mind.  
They thought at first that was what had happened to Anders. He lay in the infirmary and didn’t move. He didn‘t speak. He could still feel the freedom the demon had shown him, he could taste it on his tongue. His face was wet with tears.

The tower closed around him, cold and dark as a grave. What if he never got out? Maybe even the lie of freedom, the illusion, would have been better than nothing.

He felt like he’d lost something.

Karl came to him. He sat with him, and wrapped him in a blanket as if it was his arms.  
Sometimes he forgot how young Anders still was.  
“You’re safe now,” he told him. “Whatever happens, they can’t make you tranquil now.” 

But the fear was still with him; the restlessness in his blood and the voices in the night. He couldn’t explain it to Karl, even in the quietest of whispers.

The most frightening thing about Tranquility, was how often he’d found himself yearning for it.


	21. Unspoken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders.

“I’ll come and get you,” Anders told Karl. “When I get free, I’ll come to Kirkwall. I’ll get you out; we’ll be together.”

They lay together, robes bundled up around tangled legs, wet faces pressed close as they whispered to each other in the dark.

“Shh, no… Maker, don’t talk like that. I don’t want you doing anything stupid Anders; I need you to stay out of trouble, I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you and I wasn’t there…” 

Karl’s fingers tightened on the younger man’s hand. “I need to know you’re safe,” he said.

“What if I don’t want to be safe?”

There was nothing keeping him anyway; Karl knew it was only a matter of time until he ran again – he couldn’t help himself. And in the end they'd get fed up with chasing after him, and find some excuse not to bring him back; to leave him in an unmarked grave, alone beneath the icy stars and far from home.

He was afraid for Anders. He’d always been afraid for him.

He kissed him, and tasted salt on his tongue

“Turn over,” Anders said.

“No more…” 

“No, not that.”

Karl sighed and rolled onto his stomach, shivering slightly as Anders pulled his robe down over his shoulders. Karl had always been clever; he knew when to keep his mouth shut, when to back down. His back was unmarked; sickly indoor skin that never saw the sun.

Anders licked the tip of his finger, and touched it to Karl’s skin.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh, I’m writing…”

Anders’ fingers were long and pale, stained with ink and elfroot, the skin around the fingernails bitten ragged and raw. Healers hands, Karl thought; or they would be, if he’d let them. Fingers he’d kissed, and felt inside him, tickling as they crawled across his back, tracing arcane symbols, charms and incantations spelled out on his skin. When Anders reached the end, he pressed a kiss to Karl’s spine, like a full stop.

“What does it say?” 

“It’s a secret,” Anders told him. “It’s my real name. You’re the only one who knows.”

“But I don’t.”

“You do now, somewhere inside you. You’ll take it with you.” Anders’ voice was hushed, but there was something fierce in it. “You won’t forget.”

“I could never forget you.” 

Karl felt he was leaving a part of himself behind; something so essential he would always feel its absence; phantom pains in the places Anders had touched.

“It’s your turn,” he said.

He lifted Anders’ hair and planted a kiss on the back of his neck. Pale skin dotted with freckles, the livid scars that only made him more precious.  
He shaped the letters slowly and carefully, the lines and the curves of them; as if the words were a spell that could keep him safe from harm.

“What is it?” Anders squirmed. He hated not knowing things.

“Mine’s a secret too.”

Karl felt the silence like a weight on his chest; the empty, impossible space where the words should have been. They echoed inside him; three tiny words that, even now, were safer left unsaid.

He prayed that Anders would carry them with him; that somewhere inside him, he’d know.


End file.
